V. I.   Lenin

Draft Directives of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) for
The Soviet Delegation to the Genoa Conference^[1]

Written: Written February 6, 1922
Published: First published in part April 24, 1962 in Pravda No. 114. First published in full in 1964 in the Fifth Russian Edition of the Collected Works, Vol. 44. Printed from the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 396^b-398^a.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

I propose the following draft of C.C. directives:

Without endorsing the list of experts, the C.C. directs the candidates nominated in it to submit within a week ˜ précis of programme and tactics (on questions that come within the terms of reference of the given expert) for the whole Genoa Conference. All People’s Commissars are obliged within 2 days to give written testimonials and guarantees for their candidates nominated as experts. Should the experts disgrace themselves in Europe they and the People’s Commissars will be held responsible.

In furtherance of the directives concerning the Genoa Conference I propose the following:

1. Without pre-determining in what form and at what time the speeches of our delegation should be made, the C.C. considers that the delegation is definitely obliged to develop a full, independent and integral programme on all cardinal issues.

2. This programme should be a bourgeois-pacifist programme with the reservation, timely and clearly expressed   by our delegation, that we do not put forward here a communist programme—the only one that is in keeping with our views—(set it forth briefly) because we wish to put before the other delegations, who hold fundamentally different views, a number of palliatives and measures of a reformist type which have already been proposed in parts in Britain and other capitalist countries by people who share bourgeois views. Under certain conditions this programme of palliatives could serve to mitigate the present difficult situation (the only real way out of which is possible given a final break with all the principles of capitalist property).

3. A tentative list of the main points of this programme:

(1) annulment of all debts;

(2) application of the “Irish” solution to all colonies and dependent countries and nations;

(3) radical revision of the Versailles Treaty;

(4) the granting of loans on favourable terms to the countries most ruined by the war and too weak to recover their own feet, while being most important for world economy as eventual suppliers of vast quantities of food and raw materials;

(5) establishment of a unified international gold unit for the currency systems of a number of countries and measures to introduce this unit;

(6) an agreement among a number of countries on measures to combat inflation and depreciation of money (enumerate some of these measures);

(7) agreement among a number of countries on measures for coping with the fuel crisis and on measures for the most rational and economical use of power resources on the basis of unified planned electrification;

(8) the same in regard to the most urgent measures for reorganising and improving international transport to handle deliveries of raw materials and food.

And so on.

4. Such a programme should be elaborated in speeches, and if this is impossible, printed in 3-4 European languages and handed out to the delegates and the press (if only in the form of a précis). (In any case it should be printed.)

5. Only such people should be admitted as experts who are capable of developing, and making out a case for such   a programme (in one or another part of it) and who have proved this capability. The experts will have to have their programmes and plans printed for Europe over their own signatures. ((Such a programme will evoke comment in the press of the Third International, whose articles will say: this attempt “to convince” will do no harm, but practically it is useless, because what is needed is a revolution; and in the press of the II and II 1/2 Internationals—we shall see what they have to say.))

Notes

[1] The addenda to the directives of the C.C. contained in this document were adopted by the Politbureau on February 8, 1922.